Alice LABOUREL: The Ballet School project is an attempt to render subjective experience as objective reality. It recreates so-called actual / physical reality out of perceived reality—that is, to build the real from one’s experience. Architecture allows users to interact with, react to, and be stimulated by the spaces they inhabit. In addition, this architecture allows inhabitants to construct their own realities by filling in the gaps, like a child using his/her imagination.

The drawings depict a building that evolves over time, influenced by external objects (e.g. motorized vehicles, flows of water) and internal activities. The school is located along the cinematic banks of the Los Angeles River.

My personal discoveries of the structure and composition of films served as the initial framework. These discoveries were used to develop an architectural language that would awaken emotions, memories, and spatial imagination.

Like in film, the project uses three timescales: the 24 hour schedule of the school, the 19 seconds it takes a train to move from one bridge to another, and the yearly arrival of water into the river. Each timescale influences the organization and evolution of the building.

The design of each element of the project is based on organic shapes found in nature. In all of the drawings, these elements were conceived of in digital three-dimensional space. They were reproduced and rendered by hand and then re-processed digitally.